Accreditation

Via Inside Higher Ed: “Six universities from Australia, Europe, Canada and the U.S. are seeking to establish a new alliance in which each organization’s massive open online courses (MOOCs) are formally accredited by partner institutions.”

After its accreditor “raised questions” about the ongoings at Mount St. Mary’s College, its controversial president Simon Newman quit.

Via The Chronicle of Higher Education: “The U.S. Department of Education is, once again, weighing in on accreditation, expanding some flexibility in the accreditation process but also warning of more scrutiny for accrediting agencies. In an 11-page ‘Dear Colleague’ letter released on Friday, the department lays out some changes in how it expects accreditors to do their jobs and how they will be considered for federal recognition, which is required for them to serve as gatekeepers for federal student aid. Colleges must be accredited by a federally recognized accreditor in order for their students to be eligible for such aid.”

Via Inside Higher Ed: “Anthony Bieda is resigning as the leader of the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, said the large, national accrediting agency, which is facing an existential threat. Bieda took over in April after the abrupt departure of the group’s longtime president, Albert Gray. In addition to Bieda’s resignation, roughly a quarter of the agency’s staff has been laid off in recent days.”

“Four small private colleges – along with one community college – have been placed on probation by the regional accreditor for the southern United States,” Inside Higher Ed reports. The schools in question: Spring Hill College, Kentucky Wesleyan College, Centenary College, Georgetown College, and Angelina College.

The new Education Secretary John King pens a blog post on “Strengthening Accreditation to Protect Students.”

Senator Elizabeth Warren says that the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools has a “long record of failure” and urges that the “glaring lack of oversight” that the accrediting body has had for for-profit universities warrants federal scrutiny.

Albert Gray, the CEO of the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, has suddenly resigned.

Via Inside Higher Ed: “Paine College announced on Saturday that it would sue the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools after its college commission rejected Paine’s appeal of SACS’ June decision to strip the college’s accreditation.”

“Military and veteran students who attend colleges that are accredited by the Accrediting Council of Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS) should be able to continue receiving Post–9/11 GI Bill benefits to attend those institutions, at least for another 18 months,” says Inside Higher Ed. This comes on the heels of last week’s decision by a federal panel to revoke ACICS’s accrediting powers.

Employers’ Thoughts on Degrees (and Alt-Degrees)

According to the BBC, “Publisher Penguin Random House says job applicants will no longer be required to have a university degree.”

Google, which has hired workers from Flatiron and other academies, recently studied the efficacy of coding camps. The company found that while the camps have shown promise, most of their graduates weren’t prepared for software engineering without additional training or prior experience, Maggie Johnson, Google’s director of education and university relations, said in an email.

Via Politico: “LinkedIn, labor-market analysis organization Burning Glass and the Markle Foundation have joined forces to roll out a new kind of job website – Skillful.com – specifically designed for middle-skills workers, or people who have a high school diploma but not a bachelor’s degree. The site launched in Colorado this month with an initial emphasis on the information technology, advanced marketing and healthcare fields, with plans to branch into the greater Phoenix area as early as next month. The project has the support of Colorado’s state government as well as Arizona State University and MOOC provider edX.”

Alt-Degrees

“Deakin University in Australia will next year offer graduate degrees and certificate programs through FutureLearn, the online learning platform owned by the Open University in the U.K.,” Inside Higher Ed reports.

Via Inside Higher Ed: “The American Council on Education on Thursday released two new papers that call for a less fragmented credentialing system in higher education and for better communication about the value of students’ competencies.”

“Top students at the University of the People, a tuition-free online institution, will be eligible to transfer to the University of California at Berkeley to finish their bachelor’s degrees,” Inside Higher Ed reports. “The two universities on Monday announced an articulation agreement under which UC Berkeley will consider UoPeople’s top associate degree graduates for admission.”

Uncollege has published a report on alternatives to a college degree, “College 2.0,” which opens with this gem: “Not that long ago, there were just three main ways to acquire new skills: go to school, hire a tutor, or get a library card.” So yeah, this definitely sounds like it’s going to be a really well-researched, historically sound report (produced in conjunction with the education search site Noodle and the coding bootcamp Coding Dojo).

Via Inside Higher Ed: "Less than a year after the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s M.B.A.-through-MOOCs program launched, its College of Business says it is seeing the contours of a model it can use to promote the university abroad, enroll previously untapped groups of students and attract corporate partners.

Via Inside Higher Ed: “The Georgia Institute of Technology is expanding its model of low-cost online computer science education to undergraduates. The institute on Tuesday said it has partnered with massive open online course provider edX and McGraw-Hill Education to offer a fully online introductory coding course. Initially, the course will be available to anyone as a MOOC with an optional $99 identity-verified certificate. After piloting the course next spring among its own students, Georgia Tech intends to offer another incentive for completion: college credit.”

The Competency-Based Education Network has released a draft of quality standards for competency-based education.

Via The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Competency-based education programs may be inexpensive to run, but they can also take longer than expected to turn a profit, according to a study released on Tuesday and supported by the Lumina Foundation.” (More in The Chronicle about the Lumina Foundation and the Gates Foundation’s policy focuses. The former says it plans to invest in credential reform, including CBE.) Inside Higher Ed also wrote about the Lumina-funded report.

Via Education Dive: “Is CBE the future of higher education? Study says too early to tell.” (If the headline had just been the question, I could have listed this under the Betteridge subheader above.)

The Blockchain is Dangerous Bullshit, But When Has That Ever Stopped Ed-Tech

Slate’s Rebecca Schuman looks at Teachur, a startup that promises a $1000 college degree. “Most of the $1,000,” writes Schuman, “will go to pay for ‘blockchain-verified assessments,’ which is ed-tech speak for ‘stuff that is set up to prevent fraud and cheating.’” Man, if only Trump University had offered assessments via the blockchain!

The University Professional and Continuing Education Association put out this press release: “Pioneering Study Reveals More Than 90 Percent of Colleges and Universities Embrace Alternative Credentials. Millennials prefer badging and certificates to traditional degrees, according to researchers from UPCEA, Penn State and Pearson.” Bullshit. But oh look, Pearson – which wants you to buy its proprietary badge system, Acclaim.

“Digital badges aren’t replacing the bachelor’s degree any time soon,” Inside Higher Ed helpfully points out. “But a growing number of colleges are working with vendors to use badges as an add-on to degrees, to help students display skills and accomplishments that transcripts fail to capture.” Smart idea, schools, to outsource one of your core functions to a vendor. Super smart.

I know I swore I’d never write about education and Bitcoin/blockchain again, but I can’t resist sharing this story: “A Florida man was arrested on Thursday for participating in a bribery scheme aimed at supporting an illegal bitcoin exchange operated by his son and owned by an Israeli behind a series of hacking attacks on organizations such as J.P. Morgan Chase,” reports Fortune. And here’s the kicker: “Michael Murgio, who serves on a school board in Palm Beach County, was charged in an indictment filed in federal court in Manhattan for participating in a scheme to pay bribes to let the bitcoin exchange's operators gain control of a credit union.”

In other Salesforce news, “The University of Texas System teams up with Salesforce to turn its learning platform into a learning relationship management system,” Inside Higher Ed reports. It includes all the buzzwords: competency-based education, personalized learning, and even blockchain!

Via The Chronicle of Higher Ed: “2 Projects That Promote Alternative Credentials Reach Key Milestones.” The projects are a credential registry, funded by the Lumina Foundation, and the 21st Century Skills Badging Challenge. It’s not quite clear what the milestones would be but I’m guessing including ITT in the credential registry wasn’t it. Ooops.